The shortest route from Jerusalem to Galilee passed through Samaria. Jews often avoided that route because of the anticipated hostility of the Samaritan inhabitants.
This would be the only formal mention of Samaria in John’s Gospel and it showed its inhabitants in a favourable light. Some scholars, from this and other references, have inferred that there may have been Samaritan disciples in John’s community.
5 So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.6 Jacob's spring was there. Jesus was worn out from the journey and sat down by the spring. It was around the sixth hour.The mention of Jacob and of a spring recalled the experiences of two of the Israelite patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, as well as of Moses [Exodus 2.15-21]. The wives of each of the three, Rebecca, Rachel and Zipporah, were first encountered by their respective husbands as they came to draw water at a well/spring. The author gently inserted a nuptial resonance into the narrative.
It is important for modern readers to be alert to the literary technique used in the Gospel. The author drew on historical incidents, but was not interested in recounting historical details. His concern was theological, not historical. He was addressing believers and seeking to lead them to a deeper appreciation of the Jesus in whom they already believed. He approached the incident from the viewpoint of faith in the risen Jesus and the meanings to be drawn from the incident for the current life of the community of disciples. The literary form was that of a dialogue, but it was not the transcript of an actual conversation. It offered, rather, a series of theological messages.
9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, "How come you, a Jewish man, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?" [Jews do not associate on friendly terms with Samaritans.]The woman was surprised. What made Jesus’ request unusual was not just that the person was a Samaritan, but that she was also a woman. It was not proper for men to initiate conversations with women, particularly when they were strangers.
10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew about the gift of God, and who it is asking you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him and he would have given you fresh water.Not surprisingly, at this stage of the interaction, the woman knew neither the gift of God nor the identity of Jesus.
Fresh water, generally, would refer to flowing water, or water welling up from a spring. In line with the literary technique, Jesus’ comment had a deeper meaning than the obvious immediate sense.
11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you do not have a bucket, and the well is deep. From where are you going to get fresh water?As the story developed from historical narrative to theology, she would discover the deeper answer to her question.
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the springand who drank from it himself, and his sons and his cattle?"In line with the familiar literary technique, the woman misunderstood Jesus’ comment. Her response was courteous, but puzzled. She addressed Jesus as Sir (The word could also be translated as “Lord”). At the same time, she challenged his apparent pretensions to power greater than Jacob’s.
13 Jesus answered her, "Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again;14 but whoever drinks the water that I shall give will never thirst again. Rather, the water I shall give them will become a spring of water within them bubbling up for eternal life."Jesus used the misunderstanding as the occasion to elucidate his deeper message. For the Gospel’s readers, Jesus was the source of a spring of water bubbling up for eternal life – in them. The Gospel would return to the image later in the narrative [7.37]. What message was the beloved disciple trying to convey? What was his sense of the presence and action of Jesus in the life of the believer? The first sign that Jesus had given, at Cana in Galilee, had involved water, which, transformed into wine, symbolised joy and abundance. Here, the beloved disciple seemed to be inviting his fellow believers to recognise and appreciate the irrepressibly refreshing, sustaining and invigorating impact that Jesus could have in their lives.
In line with what he had already spoken about, that source was the unmerited, unconditional love that Jesus had for whoever would believe it. The task was precisely to believe it: to trust Jesus and to entrust themselves to Jesus.
The woman had still not understood, yet she was open to cooperating with whatever Jesus had to offer.
It is important again to remember that the dialogue was essentially a theological discourse. This exchange between Jesus and the woman probably had nothing to do with her marital history. Yet, the narrative context may have had importance for the theological meaning. The woman’s experience of five former husbands and one current partner cast her as a woman deeply hurt, either by bereavement or divorce or desperation. She would have known loneliness, abandonment, rejection and betrayal. She would have been familiar with dreams turned sour, and with hopes unfulfilled.
The more pertinent theological meaning was, however, different. A number of Hebrew prophets had used the imagery of husband and wife to refer to the relationship between God and Israel.
Jeremiah had lamented:
… as a faithless wife leaves her husband,so you have been faithless to me, O house of Israel [Jeremiah 3.20]. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord [Jeremiah 31.32]. Isaiah had written in similar vein:For your Maker is your husband;… the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,… For the Lord has called youlike a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit,like the wife of a man’s youth when she is cast off… For a brief moment I abandoned you,but with great compassion I will gather you. [Isaiah 54.5-7]When the northern and southern kingdoms had first split, both had been relatively faithful to God; but over time, the northern kingdom had adopted the gods of its successive conquerors. At the time of the encounter between Jesus and the woman, though Samaria believed itself faithful to God, Jesus insisted that that was not the case. “With great compassion”, he sought to call them to conversion.
Since the woman's present partner was not her husband, new possibilities opened up for her. She could have a new marriage, this time with the true God: not the nationalistic God envisaged by current Judaism, nor the one worshipped on Mt.Gerizim, but the God revealed and embodied in Jesus.
The woman had no adequate words to express her growing fascination with Jesus. Given that it was prophets who had spoken of God and Israel in terms of husband and wife, it was a good effort on her part to see Jesus as a prophet. This was the first time in the narrative that the title was used of Jesus. He would use it of himself on a later occasion [4.44].
20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. And you people say that Jerusalem is the place to worship."The woman was not particularly familiar with finer theological distinctions between Jews and Samaritans; but she was aware of the practical difference between their places of worship – Gerizim and Jerusalem. Perhaps, she felt that the God whom Samaritans had worshipped on Mt.Gerizim was the same God worshipped by Jews in Jerusalem. She felt more familiar exploring that issue.
21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither in this place nor in Jerusalemwill you worship the father.22 You worship one you do not know; we worship the one we know – because salvation does come from the Jews.Jesus was speaking of the Jews as the People of God, not confining the term here to the Jewish leaders. Jesus was Jewish, and stood within the long history of Israel. God’s work of salvation, begun with Israel, would culminate through the person and action of Jesus.
23 But the hour is coming, it is now, when genuine worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth. Indeed, the father wants worshippers such as this.24 God is spirit,and those worshipping him need to worship in spirit and in truth."The Gospel’s readers were well aware of the destruction of Jerusalem and of its Temple by the Roman armies in the year 70 AD. Even before that had happened, they had emotionally moved from their previous sense of Jerusalem as the focal point of their worship. By the time the Gospel was written, they were unwelcome even to meet with their fellow Jews in the synagogues scattered around the Diaspora. They had learnt to be self-sufficient. Under the influence of the Spirit of the risen Jesus in their midst, their worship had become worship in spirit and in truth.
Through no fault of her own, theological discussion was beyond the woman’s range of experience. She was in no position to agree or disagree. So, to extract herself from a situation where she felt out of her depth, she expressed her hope that the coming Messiah would clarify the matter.
Samaritans expected a Messiah, not a descendant of David – a royal Messiah – but a teacher and revealer of things unknown.
26 Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one speaking to you."The translation is not clear. It could be understood, simply, as Jesus' affirming that he was, in fact, the Messiah. To draw that conclusion would be to miss the point.
In referring to himself as I am he, Jesus used the name that was reserved for God alone, the name God had revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush [Exodus 3.14]. It was a term that the woman would understand (since Samaritans accepted the Book of Exodus).
By identifying himself as I am he, Jesus identified himself as the perfect human revelation of God. He was also claiming that his identity was not drawn from his role (Messiah), his gifts, or his chosen behaviour. All of these flowed from his identity, but they did not constitute it. In a sense, any single predicate would be a restriction of his identity. Jesus' sense of himself was deeper, drawn from the simple truth of himself. He was in touch with his deepest reality, his radical being. He was truly self-possessed – his identity totally uncluttered, undefined, unlimited. He had come to know who he was, because he was loved by another, his Father.
The term would recur frequently as the narrative unfolded, but it was not by accident that the Gospel showed Jesus first revealing his name to a woman who was also a Samaritan. Jesus' particular concern was to reach out to and to include those marginalised by current social and religious systems. They were the ones oppressed by the power plays of those at the centre, but not so likely to be distracted by them. They did not need so deeply the “god-on-our-side”, the god who was the projection of the suppressed insecurities of the powerful. They were more open to receive the newness that Jesus had to offer.
27 With that the disciples came along and they were amazed that he was talking to a woman, though no one asked, "What do you want from her, or why are you talking to her?"The Gospel briefly reverted from theology to narrative. The disciples’ amazement was due to the fact that Jesus defied convention to reach out to a woman. The Beloved Disciple may have included their comment in the narrative as a way of countering instinctive male diffidence regarding the place of women in the community of disciples.
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